Activity Overview
Students will interpret a confidence level as the average success rate of the process used to produce an interval intended to contain the true mean of the population. Students will recognize that as the confidence level increases, on average, the confidence interval increases in width.
Objectives
- Students will interpret a confidence level as the degree of confidence in the process used to produce an interval that will contain the true mean of the population.
Vocabulary
- confidence interval
- confidence level
- population parameter
About the Lesson
This lesson involves generating a confidence interval for the mean of a population from a random sample of size n and considering how certain one can be that this interval would contain the actual population mean.
As a result, students will:
- Experiment with different confidence levels and finally investigate the relationship between confidence levels and sample size.
- Use the actual population mean to check their estimates and to develop an understanding of the meaning of confidence level.